Stephen Keable

Where’s Baker

Posted on 23 August 2010 | No responses

This is Baker, he’s the Smash Skates cat. I was inspired too create a logo for Smash Skates based around their cat, which also lead to a few illustrations I created for a handmade zine I gave Ash (Smash Skates owenr) as a birthday present.

Why add hashtags to tweets?

Posted on 18 August 2010 | No responses

So what is a hashtag?

It’s a word prefixed with a hash symbol so #hashtag, #twitter etc added normally to the end of a tweet. It’s normally used to tag a tweet or link with a topic, similar to how meta keywords used to work for search engines to tell the search engine what the page was about. Here’s a couple of examples

@Signalnoise: Wait, one of Kyle Cooper’s teachers at Yale was Paul Rand?! #FITC
@xboxer360: Dragon Age 2 Gets a Release Date and Trailer – http://bit.ly/d6xwBT #xbox #xbox360 #gaming

The first adds a hashtag of FITC which is an event called Flash in the Community, the second adds relevant tags for the console the link is about and a general gaming tag too.

What do people use them for, once I have added them?

On the main Twitter website (and many of the apps too) these hashtags are turned into links to searches, so you can click the tag and find other posts about this topic. These searches can then be added to RSS feed readers so people get all the tweets about this particular topic. Some apps such as TweetDeck allow you to add these searches so that it displays all the posts with that tag as they happen.

But surely only the really tech savvy will use this functionality then?

This may be true that only heavy twitter users or geeky types use the twitter searches or RSS feeds, however these users are also likely to be “influencers” with lots of followers or being followed by the right people, meaning that if they see your post via a hashtag then retweet it, you may find your tweet doing the rounds very quickly.

Norwich Foursquare meet-up – 19th September

Posted on 13 August 2010 | No responses

I’m an avid Foursquare user and have been for a while now, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and set up a meet-up of people who use Foursquare in the Norwich area, as a way of gauging what the take up of the service has been and how people use it. Also to try and unlock the swarm badge too.

So if you are a Foursquare user and live in the Norwich area why not come along, details can be found on the meetup.com page or Facebook page.

Return of the animated GIF

Posted on 11 August 2010 | No responses

Since the arrival of the iPad and it’s lack of Flash support, lots of people have moaned about video and interactive elements on websites no longer working on many sites. We have then seen big PR and marketing pushes by lots of websites saying they are now iPad compatible.

The thing which hasn’t gotten as much press is that many websites are now showing very few adverts, as they were mostly created in Flash too, with some campaigns having basic fall back GIFs for the few non Flash users. This perhaps shows how little attention users pay to them nowadays.

However the commercial people behind many sites have begun to get worried and are looking into how to create their Flash adverts in a non-Flash format, the holy grail seems to currently be something from Adobe called renderFXG, which is a javascript tool which can render their FXG file format in the browser using the HTML5 canvas tags. This is the ideal solution as ad agencies can continue to use Flash to create ads then simply export them in a slightly different format.

The other option you have with existing tools is the dominant format from the pre flash days, the good ole’ fashioned animated GIF. Which is an art form unto itself, trying to create a good looking animated advert with a 256 colour palette whilst keeping the file size below 100k, can be pretty difficult.

Whilst Adobe beaver away at a solution and as HTML5 is still a draft standard, the animated GIF seems the only good compatible short term solution. So perhaps it’s time to brush up on the Photoshop animation skills again, or even see if ImageReady will still run on that old Mac in the office.

Where the magic happens

Posted on 9 August 2010 | No responses

So this is my desk and where I edit my photos, write blog posts, design things and beaver away at code, on the evenings and weekends. I’ve finally got it almost the way I want it in the lounge, with a bookcase of books full of inspiration and near the stereo (which was playing The Kinks when this was taken).

Flash Pong

Posted on 8 August 2010 | No responses

A long while ago I had some spare time on my hands at work so decided to try and push my ActionScript and Flash skills to try and create a Flash clone of the classic tennis game Pong. So above is the fruit of my labour in all it’s ActionScript 2.0 Flash glory, well unless you are on a device without Flash in which case sorry.

iPad apps that display your content

Posted on 7 August 2010 | No responses

A few apps have appeared on the iPad recently that render your content in a new layout, either via an RSS feed or by scraping the page in someway.

The two stand out apps are Pulse which is a rather nice RSS feed reader which displays content in a better way than the usual list of title tags and descriptions.

Whilst good for the user, depending on how your RSS feed is set it it may allow users to read your content without any need to visit your site in it’s usual template, which may contain adverts. It does have a link to view on web but its not a default setting.

The other app is Flipboard which takes content from your Twitter and Facebook accounts and presents it in a magazine or newspaper style dividing the page into blocks, with images cropped to fit, pull quotes and snippets from links. You can also use it to follow specific twitter accounts. It also accompanies the content with relevant responses from Facebook comments or twitter posts with the same link.

Flipboard is a little with regard to encouraging users to visit your site as it tends to cut content short to preserve the layout on the page, and has a prominent Read on Web button.

I’ll be interested to see what new way to show content someone comes up with next.

Albums to get work done

Posted on 3 August 2010 | No responses

Back when I was a scanner operator, before the days of everyone having a digital camera and broadband, you had to scan all the photos of houses for the property pages in newspapers. This was a mind numbing task at times however my iPod got me through it. I still stick the headphones in when I need to block out distractions and get on with it. Above are some of my favourite albums to get me through work.

Inspiration Girl/Chocolate

Posted on 2 August 2010 | No responses

Skateboarding has been a huge influence on my life for more than ten years now, the biggest influence has always come from the Girl and Chocolate Skateboards family (also known as Crailtap). Above are so links to the photographers, designers and artists from those companies.

iPhone 4 impressions

Posted on 13 July 2010 | No responses

I’ve had my shiny new iPhone 4 a couple of weeks now, after being able to upgrade early with O2 for £26 by trading in my old iPhone 3G 16GB for £172. I would recommend anyone to try this as the value of the old phones is slowly decreasing.

The two biggest things that you notice are the resolution of the display and secondly the vastly improved camera. The display packs a whopping 326 dpi resolution which is higher resolution than most magazine photos are printed in. The camera steps up to 5MP, with auto-focus and LED flash/light also the HD (720p) video option is an added bonus.

Example of the HD footage

I’ll leave you with the thought of, what if the 326 dpi is included in the next iPad at nearly magazine size?

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